Podcast „Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“

It was probably one or two moments of shock in road traffic that gave Wilhelm Veigel an idea in the 1920s: a dual control system for driving school cars, allowing instructors to intervene from the passenger seat. From this simple mechanism grew a company that has shaped driver training for decades. Today, the family business employs over 100 people, generates around 14 million euros in revenue, and produces not only driving school equipment but also driving aids for people with disabilities.

But conditions for medium-sized automotive suppliers have changed, says CEO Jann Swyter: “The big manufacturers never understood that, with the German Mittelstand, they had a treasure of innovative companies at their side. Instead, they kept them small.” For Veigel, this meant stepping out of the role of a mere supplier and moving into its own innovations.

Today, the family-owned company invests in software, AI, and virtual reality. With the business unit SYNPLI, Jann Swyter aims for nothing less than reinventing the driving school of the future – with an instructor AI that intelligently connects theory, practice, and simulator training. The goal is to accompany learner drivers individually through adaptive learning systems and, in doing so, also challenge the German education system to some extent. “We don’t have a problem with driver training, we have a problem with the German school system,” says the Veigel CEO.

Why Jann Swyter sees autonomous driving not as a threat but as the greatest opportunity for Veigel, how he is transforming his company “from pedal to pixel,” and why he sometimes imagines an autonomous platform with a disco ball and poker table for the mobility of the future – that’s what he talks about in the podcast „Alles Neu…? Aus dem Maschinenraum“ with Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Capital editor Katja Michel.

How can the origin and future of Mittelstand companies be courageously united? What are the challenges facing family businesses and what experiences do they gather in digital transformation? These questions are answered by “Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“, the interview podcast for German Mittelstand*. Once a month, Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Nils Kreimeier, Senior Editor of the business magazine Capital, talk to thought leaders and makers from the heart of the German economy and focus on the personalities and their motivation. *The podcast is in German.

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